Tuesday Evening Thoughts

I'm grateful for my eight Followers, and I can't wait to learn more about the Follower program. I vow to post a true book blog entry tomorrow. For this evening, this post is all I've got.

I am aggrieved (sp.?) that I have but a few minutes to post an entry. A crazy day, but yesterday was much, much crazier. A truly Manic Monday. But in early September, my life changes.

Today I escaped to SUNY (State University of New York) Adirondack, where I'll be teaching writing to first-year students this fall (September-Christmas). I'm extremely excited about it and, as a lifetime writer, I feel a tremendous sense of mission. I'm sure you don't want to hear about all the books about the teaching of writing that I picked up!

In a few minutes Ken and I will have a relaxing dinner with warm, comforting friends at Trapper's Tavern and I'll have an opportunity to reflect on what's most important. Rick is a Richard Russo fan (as is Ken, my husband) and Anne is a 100% Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Mystery afficiando. I always enjoy her take on books and movies because she always sees the mystical bend of things. I seem to only see what's in front of my face.

Thank you, Book Blogger Hoppers

I want to say a hearty thank you to everyone who participated in the Book Blogger Hop this weekend. After a Friday all-day meeting, I awoke Saturday morning facing a gut-wrenching crisis of conscience related to my wilderness preservation work. It was a tremendous relief to take a long break and visit a number of fascinating, new (to me) "Blogs of Substance."

I felt as though all of you book bloggers are my good friends who help me survive in the midst of this crazy world we live in today.

Holy Hell! More Authors!

Yes, at times I am driven to expletives, especially when I'm triple-tasking and not fulfilling my assignments properly.

As part of the Book Blogger Hop (see my previous post for the link), I was supposed to name my favorite authors--plural. Okay, indeed, I've had a trying week, but so has nearly everyone else. I can handle this simple task and get it right.

Paul Auster (see my previous post)


T.C. Boyle: Drop City is one of my favorite tomes of all time. No one else, not one single author has captured the mid-late 1960s the way Boyle has in that book. Also, don't miss Talk, Talk if you value the preservation of your identity. A truly, scary tale that has me hiding my personal information from everyone. No one gets my Social Security number anymore or my birthdate or anything else!

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre is probably my all-time favorite classic. I've read it three times, all at different ages, and it has something for every decade you're alive. I also loved Villette!


Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. The Nobel Prize Winner's classic. I am as equally passionate about this novel as I am about David Lean's 1965 film masterpiece of the same name. For heaven's sake, you must see the film and read the book! Pasternak turned me on to all of Russian literature, Russian history, Russian art, and the Russian language.

P.D. James is my favorite crime writer. I've posted about her books recently.

Laura Ingalls Wilder. When this children's writer is mentioned, her daughter Rose Wilder Lane must be uttered in the same breath. Wilder Lane edited her mother's Little House books. They are incomparable American classics.

Madeleine L'Engle--my other favorite children's and young adult author of Meet the Austins, Wrinkle in Time, and many, many more. L'Engle was so acutely attuned to the sensitivities of pre-adolescents and adolescents.

I could go on and on and on with my favorite authors. But I'll stop here. Oh, don't forget Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden and The Little Princess. How I still adore those books.

The Saturday Afternoon Blog Hop

I'm in desperate need of a diversion this weekend, so this afternoon I'm venturing forth on Crazy for Book's Book Blogger Hop. If you scroll down to view the Book Blogger Hop sign-up, you'll see that I'm the only blogger who listed my blog description INCORRECTLY. My apologies to everyone. To answer the question posed, I can say I blog primarily about Fiction, Memoir/Biography, and History. I think.

I have many authors whose work I treasure, but if I were to name my all-time favorite, it's Paul Auster. Please check out my Auster posts of June 9th and June 25th if you're interested in knowing more about his fiction. For a wonderful review of Invisible, Auster's most recent book, please visit Katrina's blog, Pining for the West.

I Ran into Bill McKibben!

Wonder of wonders, I ran into my hero at the Grand Union grocery store in North Creek, 12 miles from my home, which is the closest place for us to buy foodstuffs. I was pawing through the ice cream case when a man, deftly wielding a grocery cart, sped around the corner. He had sunglasses on and a 350.org t-shirt, which was the dead giveaway to the celebrity's identity. Bill McKibben, back in Johnsburg! (He now lives with his wife, the author Sue Halpern, across Lake Champlain near Middlebury, Vermont.)


As I've said before in this blog, McKibben's book Wandering Home: A Long Walk across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks was the final impetus that pushed Ken and me to move from Boston to the Adirondack wilderness, the last remaining wilderness in the East, which is protected by the New York State constitution, protected more fully than any wild land in the United States. McKibben was a leading wilderness preservationist at the time.

Alas, I have to put that verb in the past tense because McKibben is now totally focused on the organization he created, 350.org, which is focused on curbing carbon emissions in the hopes of stalling out-of-control climate change. I have absolutely no quarrels with that--he sees his mission and it's now a global one.


At the grocery store, on this, my second time meeting him, I was so tongue-tied, I couldn't say much, though he quite clearly remembered me. I told him I loved his "latest book," momentarily forgetting the title, something that could only happen to someone of my vintage, but we exchanged a few co-activist pleasantries (I told him about my wilderness preservation work) and then we moved on. A very nice man, who is NOT full of himself. Very nice, indeed.

The title of his latest book is Eaarth:Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. I read it earlier this year when it first came out. And I urge others to read it. We need people like McKibben to remind us, over and over again, that the planet we live on now is not the one we think we live on, but a vastly changed planet. Let's change the course we're on before it's too late!

News Flash: Is Book Swim the Netflix of Books?

Before I dive into the primary topic of this post, I'd like to say that I made an error yesterday. I'm on page 300 of Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge, not page 200. The 92-degree heat and the glass of merlot I was drinking yesterday must have addled my brain.

Book Swim! Have you heard about this new subscription program that allows its members to rent books, including bestsellers and top current titles, for a fixed monthly fee?

First of all, I must say that like many of my friends living here in wildermania, Ken and I love Netflix. Love may be too mild a word for the rapture we experience. We treasure it so much that we carry the most expensive subscription--something like $18+/month.

So the idea of Book Swim tantalizes. Just think: Instead of the online haggling with our regional library system to wait in line for new books, I could get three recently published books at a time for a monthly fee of $23.95. No due dates. Keep them as long as you want, though of course you will continue to pay the monthly fee.

But wait a minute. Three books. Would that work out to be three books per month? Or, if I were a fast reader, could it work out to six books per month? I don't know. Book Swim has a number of other subscription levels. Five books at a time. Seven books at a time. And so on.

Please visit the website and give your opinion about what you think about the Book Swim program. I think it would be ideal for someone with a big job, a big income, and a minimum of time to go roaming from library to bookstore to get their books.

One complication I envision is that lots of the books I want to read are not available through Book Swim. Back titles, obscure books--it couldn't possibly supply all my reading needs.

It's too bad there's not a free trial available. I imagine the company might go broke if they tried it, especially because they're just getting started. But doesn't the minimum subscription of $23.95sound like a great deal of money? That's nearly $300/year, which I consider a huge investment in books that you rent and never own.

Please weigh in with your comments.

Arcadia Falls & The Invisible Bridge

A few days ago, Danielle of the incomparable book blog A Work In Progress (see the link to the right) asked for my opinion about Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman. It's a gothic, for sure, set in an arts-oriented boarding school in a beautifully rendered setting in upstate New York (an area south of where I live).

I found the writing to be lyrical, quite lovely, in fact. But the plot and the characterization disappointed me, which was exactly the criticism I had about Lake of the Dead Languages, Goodman's first novel. If you adore gothics, don't miss Arcadia Falls. That would be my advice. But if you are lukewarm toward them, I would not recommend that you seek this one out.

Danielle, what was your opinion of the Goodman novel you read? I'd be very interested to know what you thought.


Oh, The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer! I'm in awe of this historical novel, set in Europe from 1937 through the latter part of World War II. At 600 pages, a sprawling book indeed. And I'm so in awe of Orringer's writing.

What I appreciate most are the intricate, colorful details she weaves into each scene. I explained to a friend that at times I feel I'm involved in the events or that I'm engrossed in an amazing film made just for me. I can see exactly what's happening and can feel the emotions of the characters. Excellent characterization, by the way, and though I'm only on page 200 (I know I can't utter a judgment on the plot), I will say the plot is engaging me thoroughly.

Anya Seton--Am I Ripe for the Gothic Challenge?

Although I've got five Chunksters under my belt for the Chunkster Challenge and am reading a sixth--The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (scroll down)--I'm faring far worse with The Gothic Challenge. I've read only one Gothic, Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman.


I considered withdrawing from The Gothic Challenge, mostly because I've been thinking that I'm wasting my time with these novels, especially because I don't enjoy them nearly as much as I did in my youth. Even so, they have an indescribable allure.


I chanced upon a blogger discussing Dragonwyck by the incomparable mid-twentieth-century American author Anya Seton. As a high-school student, my mother the librarian got me hooked on Katherine, a historical novel about Katherine Swynford, the wife of John of Gaunt, of the House of Lancaster (an English royal of the 14th century--actually I believe their children were Lancastrian, though I'm not at all sure John of Gaunt was considered so during his lifetime).

I believe I also read Seton's Green Darkness , though I have only the vaguest memories of it.

Dragonwyck beckons, and it's a true Gothic published in 1941, at the height of Daphne DuMaurier's "Gothic" fame.

How about This Book Cover?

I laughed uproariously at this book cover, largely because summertime is the time of year that we are "entertained" by black bears. I know the cover is a portrait of a grizzly bear, a dreadfully dangerous species that doesn't live in the East, but still, the cover sends everyone here into a tizzy of wild, somewhat hysterical chuckling.

Most of our black bear visitations are either mothers with a couple of cubs in tow or juveniles (bears from 2-? years that have not attained maturity). They all make the rounds, especially from dusk until dawn. As long as we're impossibly neat with our trash, and keep it locked up in the garage, they don't cause any problems.

Anyway, the book cover led me to investigate the author Sloane Crosley. I have ordered from the library her first book I Was Told There'd Be Cake. I don't usually read humorous essays, but in this case I'm making an exception, because her first book is about her initiation into life on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a part of the city I love.